Like the Journal, the Post also “grouped” me with two other books, but in this case two “self-improvement” books.

Here goes:

The author, a longtime correspondent for the Economist, will surely elicit comparisons to the work of Malcolm Gladwell and others with his new book, which deals with pressure, resilience and why some people (and companies) thrive while others don’t. Kluth’s originality lies in examining the successes and failures of the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal in order to illuminate our own. One of Kluth’s tenets is that “part of success is adjusting your idea of what it is.” That can be true for failure, as well, he reasons, and it’s important to know the difference. For example, Hannibal’s miraculous crossing of the Alps was a triumph in the short run, but in the end his enemies, the Romans, endured.

If not discussing your book directly, at the very least they could have drawn parallels between the potential collapse of Europe and the collapse of the Roman Empire and editorialized on whether such “failures” might not, in fact, be but temporary hiccups on the road to Shangri-la.

I’m not familiar with the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten. Out of my region. My valley, my castle.

These people may have their own local paper. I don’t know. Oberösterreich borders on Bavaria, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they got a large portion of their news from Bayrischer Rundfunk airwaves bleeding across the border.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch. You’ve just added four times more ungeheuerliche Grammatikfehler than you corrected.

And your logic is flawed, for in spite of having covered Hannibal and Me, neither the WSJ nor the WP have thus far deigned to report on this year’s dearth of snow in Niederösterreich, which has resulted in an explosion of the local wild boar population. Not von weltweiter Wichtigkeit, you say? A potential harbinger of the apocalypse, I say.

your logic is flawed, for in spite of having covered Hannibal and Me, neither the WSJ nor the WP have thus far deigned to report on this year’s dearth of snow in Niederösterreich, which has resulted in an explosion of the local wild boar population. Not von weltweiter Wichtigkeit, you say?